IntelliSUITE – NEW!

With IntelliSUITE our newest enterprise workforce management solution, you can generate schedules, track actual hours worked, confirm hours worked for payroll, have an audit process for hours worked, and track time spent per task to gauge efficiency and effectiveness across your organization.

IntelliVIEW – NEW!

IntelliVIEW is Pipkins’ new mentoring and collaboration tool. It allows managers, supervisors and team members alike quick and easy ways to interact and communicate with each other, and it’s conveniently embedded inside your Pipkins’ workforce management suite.

IntelliTRACK – NEW!

Forget about the standard time clock apps you’ve used. Pipkins’ cloud-based IntelliTRACK is a time clock, a task tracker and more. And, it can be used by your entire workforce, including at-home and offsite workers.

WebAccess

WebAccess was created to improve communication and automate many routine tasks for agents and their supervisors. Streamlined communications and process automation are critical for organizations to enhance employee morale by providing the necessary tools to perform day-to-day tasks in fast, efficient ways.

Performance Management

Pipkins’ Spreadsheet Performance Management consolidates real-time performance data into customizable reporting and dashboards so you can get the actionable data you need to move the needle. The performance of agent, team, and group metrics can be quickly delivered to every level of organizations from the front office contact center to the back office by utilizing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

SwiftPik for iOS

Mobile Access

Mobile device support is now offered exclusively for Pipkins Vantage Point WebAccess module. This enhancement enables users equipped with smart phones or tablets to check agent status at a glance, modify schedules with a click while in meetings or off-site, send messages and notifications and view reports from hundreds of miles away.

Real-Time Adherence

If your agents are not adhering to the optimal schedules delivered by the workforce management system, this will contribute to lost time and higher costs, which hurt your bottom line. Real-Time Adherence is a key ingredient in managing your workforce and delivering industry standard KPIs, while improving your overall productivity.

@HomeVantage

Pipkins’ @HomeVantage gives organizations the ability to effectively manage their agents as the “Home Shoring” phenomenon continues to rapidly grow. Companies want to offer highly skilled employees a flexible work environment, making at-home scheduling even more important.

Why Do Workforce Management Systems Fail?

Why Do Workforce Management Systems Fail?

March 30, 2010

On November 28, 1979, New Zealand Airlines Flight 901 left Auckland Airport carrying 237 passengers and 20 crew members. The flight was a routine sightseeing trip bound for Antarctica. Flight Planning entered coordinates in the computerized navigation system. The pilots of Flight 901 also entered a series of latitude and longitude coordinates. Unknown to the pilots, two of the coordinates had been changed earlier that morning which changed the flight path of the aircraft approximately 30 miles to the east. The change of a couple of degrees in the two coordinates put Flight 901 on a path toward an active volcano, Mount Erebus. The routine sightseeing flight terminated on Mount Erebus in one of the deadliest crashes in aviation history when all 257 aboard were killed.

What does an airline crash have in common with workforce management software? Aviation navigation is based on mathematical equations and even a smal deviation in the equation can dramatically alter the course. Workforce management software uses mathematical algorithms for accurate agent forecasting and scheduling based on data exclusive to each center’s target service levels, fluctuating cal volumes, agent skill set, and “what if” scenario requirements.

The airline crash analogy is at the heart of why workforce management systems fail to deliver software that adequately addresses forecasting and scheduling requirements. Seventy-eight percent of Pipkins’ install base are replacement systems. A well-known retailer with 2,000 agents abandoned three different packages over a six-year period because the programs lacked critical functions and flexibility to meet the call center’s needs. A catalog company switched systems because their legacy platform was unable to maintain sufficient historical cal data to generate accurate forecasts.

What determines accurate forecasting?

Providing the required accuracy, by taking into account all the historic and future dynamics, requires a sophisticated forecasting tool. Only the most sophisticated systems can perform correlated forecasting, which is forecasting for specific events such as catalog drops or other marketing events that cause wide fluctuations in the volume of calls that must be processed.

Critical components for accurate forecasting

Accurate forecasting is the foundation of cal center scheduling, and without it, over- and understaffing will occur. Accurate forecasting in a skil -based routing environment is the most critical component of workforce management. Without accurate forecasting, scheduling wil fail to correctly plan for anticipated workloads. Precise scheduling is based on accurate workload requirements.

An infinite number of different service objectives on one or more work streams

Algorithms that reflect real life customer behavior

Special events are treated differently, i.e., mail drops, campaigns, and special promotions can be quantified

Email and faxes have service objectives reflecting the way that work is handled

The Importance of Historical Trend Analysis and Pattern Recognition

Algorithms should include curve mapping and pattern recognition. In environments where workloads regularly ebb and flow due to marketing activities and other definable variables, Historical Trend Analysis is the only way to ensure proper staffing because it is the only methodology that can incorporate complex historical trends in its calculations. Without pattern matching to predict different customer behavior for different events, the risk of over- or understaffing increases dramatically. Historical Trend Analysis not only accurately predicts the continuation of trends, but the more advanced algorithms also incorporate pattern recognition to fine-tune forecasts for special events like promotional mailings or national holidays. Each time a particular event reoccurs, the forecasted call volume is automatically adjusted to reflect the increase or decline in incoming work caused by comparable occurrences in the past, such as a historical 40 percent drop in volume on the Fourth of July.

An important component of accurate forecasting is having an integrated approach to support multi-skilled issues. It is necessary to have forecasting algorithms that directly calculate requirements in a multi-skilled environment, while avoiding repetitive analytical simulations. A single forecasted set of requirements should be generated for al inter-woven skil ed activities, regardless of the type of work being offered, such as email and chat. Recognizing secondary skills and accounting for cal overflow to available secondarily skil ed agents wil help eliminate overstaffing. Forecasts that are based solely on primary skills will generally overstaff, since overflow cannot be considered as a factor.

Assigning Attributes to Specific Events

To further enhance accuracy, some forecasting tools also make it possible to describe each event in detail through the use of attributes. For example, one catalog drop might consist of 10,000 pieces sent to women between the ages of 20 and 35 in Southern California, while another might involve 5,000 pieces directed at women above the age of 35 in the Midwest. By logging these characteristics into the system, analysts ensure that the differing cal patterns produced by each drop wil be “remembered” and used in forecasting cal volumes the next time similar mailings go out.

The most advanced systems can search for historic trends that parallel upcoming events both by specific match (e.g. the specific guest host on a TV shopping channel) and by a range of values (e.g. products between $50 and $100). This aids in correlating past and future events. There will be a substantial difference in response to a piece of jewelry that sells for $200 and one that sells for $2,000, and only a tool that allows this information to be recorded can factor in that difference when creating a forecast.

Workforce management is based on science and should be approached from a scientific perspective. Marketing hype cannot change the fact that if forecasting is inaccurate, everything else will be off balance. Many workforce management systems purchased by cal centers have resulted in dissatisfaction and ultimately, replacement. Avoid being a statistic of failed workforce management systems and ensure that the algorithms in your system will produce accurate forecasts.

About Pipkins

Pipkins, Inc. is a leading supplier of workforce management software and services to the cal center industry. For the past twenty-seven years, Pipkins has consistently created and delivered superior workforce management products for cal centers of al sizes. Pipkins maintains its reputation as an industry leader with thirteen industry-first applications. Pipkins’ premier product, Vantage Point, is the most accurate forecasting and scheduling tool on the market. Pipkins’ systems forecast and schedule more than 300,000 agents in over 500 locations across al industries worldwide. For more information, visit www.Pipkins.com.

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IntelliSUITE – NEW!

With IntelliSUITE our newest enterprise workforce management solution, you can generate schedules, track actual hours worked, confirm hours worked for payroll, have an audit process for hours worked, and track time spent per task to gauge efficiency and effectiveness across your organization.

IntelliVIEW – NEW!

IntelliVIEW is Pipkins’ new mentoring and collaboration tool. It allows managers, supervisors and team members alike quick and easy ways to interact and communicate with each other, and it’s conveniently embedded inside your Pipkins’ workforce management suite.

IntelliTRACK – NEW!

Forget about the standard time clock apps you’ve used. Pipkins’ cloud-based IntelliTRACK is a time clock, a task tracker and more. And, it can be used by your entire workforce, including at-home and offsite workers.

WebAccess

WebAccess was created to improve communication and automate many routine tasks for agents and their supervisors. Streamlined communications and process automation are critical for organizations to enhance employee morale by providing the necessary tools to perform day-to-day tasks in fast, efficient ways.

Performance Management

Pipkins’ Spreadsheet Performance Management consolidates real-time performance data into customizable reporting and dashboards so you can get the actionable data you need to move the needle. The performance of agent, team, and group metrics can be quickly delivered to every level of organizations from the front office contact center to the back office by utilizing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

SwiftPik for iOS

Mobile Access

Mobile device support is now offered exclusively for Pipkins Vantage Point WebAccess module. This enhancement enables users equipped with smart phones or tablets to check agent status at a glance, modify schedules with a click while in meetings or off-site, send messages and notifications and view reports from hundreds of miles away.

Real-Time Adherence

If your agents are not adhering to the optimal schedules delivered by the workforce management system, this will contribute to lost time and higher costs, which hurt your bottom line. Real-Time Adherence is a key ingredient in managing your workforce and delivering industry standard KPIs, while improving your overall productivity.

@HomeVantage

Pipkins’ @HomeVantage gives organizations the ability to effectively manage their agents as the “Home Shoring” phenomenon continues to rapidly grow. Companies want to offer highly skilled employees a flexible work environment, making at-home scheduling even more important.